way it was one-fifth longer than the cubit of Memphis--viz. 20.628
inches, as previously deduced by him from Greaves' measurements of the
King's Chamber and other parts of the interior of the Great Pyramid.
Before drawing his final inference as to the Sacred Cubit being 24.75
inches, and as so many steps conducting to that inference, Sir Isaac
shows that the Sacred Cubit was some measurement intermediate between a
long and moderate human step or pace, between the third of the length of
the body of a tall and short man, etc. etc. Professor Smyth has
collected several of the estimations thus adduced by Newton as "methods
of approach" to circumscribe the length of the Sacred Cubit, and omitted
others. Adding to eight of these alleged data, what he mistakingly avers
to be Sir Isaac's deduction of the actual length of the Sacred Cubit in
British inches--(namely, 24.82 instead of 24.753)--as a ninth quantity,
he enters the whole nine in a table as follows:--

_Professor Smyth's Table of Newton's data of Inquiry regarding the
Sacred Cubit._[259]

"First between 23.28 and 27.94 British inches.
Second " 23.3 27.9 "
Third " 24.80 25.02 "
Fourth " 24.91 25.68[260] "
And Fifth, somewhere near 24.82."

"The mean of all which numbers" (Professor Smyth remarks) "amounts to
25.07 British inches. The Sacred Cubit, then, of the Hebrews" (he adds)
"in the time of Moses--_according to Sir Isaac Newton_--was equal to
25.07 British inches, with a probable error of +-.1."

But--"_according_ to Sir Isaac Newton"--the Sacred Cubit of the Jews was
_not_ 25.07, as Professor Smyth makes him state in this table, but 24.75
British inches, as Sir Isaac himself more than once deliberately infers
in his Dissertation.[261] Besides, in such inquiries, is it not
altogether illogical to attempt to draw mathematical deductions by these
calculations of "means," and especially by using the ninth quantity in
the table--viz. Sir Isaac's own avowed and deliberate deduction
regarding the actual length of the Sacred Cubit--as one of the nine
quantities from which that length was to be again deduced by the very
equivocal process of "means?" Errors, however, of a far more serious
kind exist. The "mean" of the nine quantities in Professor Smyth's table
is, he infers, 25.07 inches; and hence he avows that this, or near this
figure, is the length of the Sacred Cubit. But the real mean of the nine
quanti